Earring
by GreenNebulae
Summary: Rare Ship Bingo Prompt: Earring Pairing: Molly/Lestrade "Hard to tell the color after all the blood," she smiles nervously, "but that's what I think."


**TheDarkestShinobi:** Last week was hectic so I missed my prompts, but I'm going to get them this week so look out!

 _ **Prompt:**_ Earring

 _ **Pairing:**_ Molly/Lestrade

"Detective Inspector Lestrade here to see Molly Hooper." Lestrade begins as he flashes his shield to the man at the desk.

"She in trouble?" The man at security seemed dumbfounded.

"No, nothing like that. She found something that could be of use to me."

"Oh, okay, good. Follow me." Lestrade falls into step with the overweight man. "I mean Molly is a little weird but she wouldn't hurt anyone." Lestrade nods.

"Like I said, she's not in trouble."

"Good, good, she really is a sweetheart, if you can get over the jokes."

"Jokes?" He questions, but the guard has knocked on a door. Lestrade waits but no answer comes and when the door opens Molly's head pokes through.

"Oh, follow me!" She chirps and the guard takes his leave as Lestrade follows her. She's never been alone with the detective inspector before, and now that she is her pulse is hammering and she's racking her brain to come up with conversation starters.

"Sherlock told me about the Mrs." She opens rather untactfully, "Bad luck. But at least you're not this guy." She meant it to be cheerful and funny, but one look at the DI's face had her backtracking.

"Um. What I meant to say is," she pauses, staring at the body's feet "is that it could be worse."

"Thanks, uh, I guess." He glances at her with narrowed eyes and she looks away from them. "It's fine though, we'd been drifting for a while. It's good to finally be done with it, you know?"

She doesn't. She is glad that they are over because now she doesn't have to feel guilty about the tingles in her stomach around him.

"I found an earring." She blurts as she hands over the marked bag to him. He takes it from her and looks at it as she continues. "Hard to imagine he wouldn't just pull it out of his back." She grabs his shoulders with her hands and pulls the body upright to show Greg where the wound was, "but given his situation I doubt he felt it."

"Yeah, I imagine he didn't." Greg glances over to the burn wound between the man's legs and shudders before looking to the puncture wound on his back.

"It must be really painful."

"It was, but if he was lucky the pain quickly faded to shock."

"Lucky?"

"As lucky as one can be, in that situation." Lestrade nods in shock as he maneuvers the earring to see it. Odd shape, but it might not tell them much.

"Maybe Sherlock can put that somewhere."

"Or maybe I can," Molly smiles. "It's a rare stud, part of a new American collection." From a celebrity she follows way too closely. She lets the body down before she pulls off one of her gloves to grab her magazine, with a big red circle around a $100,000 pair. "Hard to tell the color after all the blood," she smiles nervously, "but that's what I think."

"Thanks!" Lestrade praises and she blushes. "This narrows the suspects down to a few and I bet only one of them has the other earring."

"Well, it's not in his back," Molly gestures to the victim before closing her eyes and gritting her teeth. "And that wasn't quite the thing to say, was it?"

"It's true." Lestrade smiles at Molly's quirkiness before looking over the body.

"It's so clean; most of it doesn't look violent anymore." He frowns "I wouldn't be able to get anything off this body."

"That's my job." Molly cheerfully replies. "I'm sure that if I turned to murder, even Sherlock would have a hard time." She tilts her head. "Not that I'm turning to murder. It's just my job, well, that and cutting them up, determining cause of death and well, you know."

"How come we didn't notice this before?" She shrugs.

"It was pretty deep in the body; I had to yank it out." She moves to the body. "Based on bruising patterns I could assume once the castration started he twisted like this and knocked the earring off a dresser. See these bruises? This injury happened less than an hour before death. Then well, you know what happens next. He must have strained like this and pierced himself." Lestrade smiled. It was nice to have things explained to him without being condemned for his lack of knowledge.

Molly shifts. "If that'll be all I've got my work cut out for me." Lestrade watches her grimace and laughs.

"You're adorable." Molly blushes as she giggles.

"People usually just think I'm weird." She looks away. She's usually much better than this. Even around Sherlock.

"Well, we deal with dead bodies all the time, you have to cope somehow."

"Yeah, you're right. We do." Her hands are starting to shake and she knows she could use some coffee so she begins to leave the room.

"Would you like some coffee?" She asks over her shoulder while holding the door open and he grins.

"Sure, my shift ends at 6." Molly freezes and the door hits her back. She slowly turns.

"Oh, like a date." Greg's face falls.

"You meant right now, I'm so sorry I-"

"Date is good." She blurts and he chuckles.

"6:30?" His soft smile prompts one of her own.

"Yeah, sounds good."

"Great, don't stiff me." He jokes as he taps the leg of the body and Molly can't help but to burst into giggles as she walked down the hall to the break room.


End file.
